The fact that this Wallace game had remained unplayed for so long was due to the Geeks universal damning of the two player game. However, help was at hand in the form of the "Danger Style" variation which exciting title lent nothing more than it being the authors username.
The rules are fairly straight forward, you are linking cities, town, villages and hamlets via a pile of roads at your disposal and depositing merchants in them and hoping to have more of them than your opponent at the end of the game. Links to settlements must be completed on your turn, the cost of which are limited by a allocated points system. Plains, forests and hills are worth 2, 3 and 4 points respectively and you receive 6 points to use each turn. Points can be carried over to a maximum of 10.
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| On the road to nowhere |
Paul and I were left musing as to whether Wallace can or has made a good game for 2 players.....Tinners Trail is his stand out game, but does it work as a 2?
La Strada plays quick and has potential. I shall reserve judgement until I've played a 3 or 4 player game
Chris - 26
Paul - 19
We then played the 2012 favourite Lords of Waterdeep, where again, I got the lieutenant quest again in the first two cards and fell way behind obtaining it. It did pay off in the end as it gave me just enough to catch Paul and win by a few points.
Chris - 182
Paul - 175
Mmm I hope it plays better with more, seeing as I think I bought it you! Tinner's Trail is 3 or 4 players I believe, I'd agree it's his stand-out game (of the ones I've played) though you may have several Brass fans with a different opinion reading this!
ReplyDeleteHmm, a good two-player Wallace game. I liked London, though Sam went off it after an initial high opinion of it. There must be one. Maybe we'll find one at Stabcon.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, there is another 2-player variant for La Strada on the geek.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/44041/la-strada-2-player-danger-style
See? It's called "Danger Style", which I think sums up modern board gaming quite neatly.
Yeah I would put Brass above TT as Wallace's masterpiece, though I do love the latter too. Brass is an open-enough game space to allow for really creative play. And though it has its detractors, surely A Few Acres of Snow is proof of his two-player chops? There is a good 2 player variant for Brass too, though its better with three or four.
ReplyDeleteRailways of the World Mexico map works well as a two player also.
(I think Danger Style is the one Chris and Paul played)
ReplyDeleteAndrew and I have had a lot of fun playing the following as two-player: Lords of Waterdeep, Seven Wonders, Macao* and Arkadia.
*I'm trying not to mention it all the time but it keeps popping up...
Oh, yes, it says so in the report. Silly me. I just assumed they'd played the dull one. Plus, I wanted to type "Danger Style".
ReplyDeleteI didn't think A few acres of snow worked that well. Kinda Dominion with a board and quite stodgy to play. And it had a flaw that he had to issue a correction to prevent it being a sure fire win for one side or the other.
ReplyDeleteI think some games just scale better than others, often just by adding a few restrictions. I think publishers like to push game designers to make their game more playable by different sized groups to extend it's appeal. However, this might not actually be best for game play.
Stone age, Alhambra and Lords of Waterdeep do this very well.
Acres remains very popular despite its flaws (overall bgg rank 80-something), though it has failed to light a fire among us GNNers. I agree Chris, the stated player number range is often an attempt by publishers to broaden the appeal - the bgg 'best with' and 'recommended with' numbers are usually a good guide.
ReplyDeleteI like Alhambras two-player set-up - though the game suffers with more than four. Pergamon has a similarly elegant two-player device. [i wrote this and lost it all before I could post - it may have lost some of the conversational tone in the post midnight re-writing]